The Greatest Mastermind
by Ink Spotz
Summary: James Moriarty was thought dead to the world, and as far as he was concerned, that's exactly what he was. Then he finds out his nemesis, Sherlock Holmes, is also still alive. The shattered mastermind knows that it's time to make a reappearance. He enlists a new friend in order to bring down Sherlock once and for all. Or, at least, that is what James thinks...
1. Author's Note

Hello dear reader!

I will keep this brief. No sense bogging you down with an author's note when you want to get to reading the story. I just wanted to inform you that this story is a work in progress. I created the whole story all in one month as part of the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) program. Where all this was written in one go, there may be some inconsistencies. I've tried to catch them all, but apologies if any have snuck through on me.

I'd also love to hear your feedback, good or bad! I want to grow as a writer, so it is all appreciated!

Thanks very much for taking the time to read this if you have, and I really hope you enjoy my fanfiction!


	2. Chapter 1: The Greatest Showman

James Moriarty had always had a flair for dramatics. What was the point in leading a boring life when you only got to have one try? James wasn't one to dwell on the problems that life threw his way. If a problem came his way, he found a way to deal with it no matter how cumbersome it at first appeared to be. That was just the type of man that James Moriarty had turned into during the course of his life. He could afford to take those risks and chances. His name was well known. His name inspired terror, and gave one a chill up their spine. It was something that James was proud of. He thought of it as his heritage of sorts, no matter how twisted that kind of thought might be. However, now he couldn't be James Moriarty. James Moriarty was dead. Now he had to be Baxter Hunt, a very ornery, bag "boy" at Fulmouth Grocers in town.

He _loathed_ it with every fiber of his Irish being. Every day he'd go to work and bag, standing as he watched all the items come his way. When he had first got hired, he had been the trickster he always was. He'd put delicate groceries in the bag alongside boxes, crushing bread and eggs to the dissatisfaction of the customers who had paid for the purchase. After getting multiple reprimands from his superior, and realizing that he needed to keep this job if he wanted to be fed, he sucked it up and dealt with it. After two years of being a bagger, he had started to grow tired of it. He felt as if he had just become a part of the mechanics of the store. He no longer felt human. Instead of staying alive, he was just staying. Staying in one spot as if that was the last thing he'd ever do. Perhaps it would be.

If his final game with the great detective had gone the way that he had envisioned it would, he knew that he wouldn't be staying in the position that he was now. No, he'd be continuing his games. Sherlock Holmes had to throw a wrench in the works by killing himself. He should have been proud that he had tricked the great detective into offing himself. He had finally pulled one over on the man. He should have been celebrating in spite of himself, but staring down at the body sprawled on the pavement like a pretzeled snow angel, he felt himself die inside. It was over. Everything was over. Now what did he have?

Well, he had his many criminal webs that he'd established. He told himself that for several weeks after his faked death and Sherlock's actual death. However, the more that time went on, the more that James lost interest in his webs. The spider watched the webs that he had spun so meticulously to catch his prey start to fray and fall apart. Yes, he heard about the many attempts by some unknown person to take it all down, but by then, a few months had expired and the spider was done. He had moved on. His webs no longer had a purpose. Nor did he. He had packed up shop (in a manner of speaking) and now found himself following the same routines day in and day out. This was all his life had left for him. Everything had added up to this. How enthralling. James Moriarty couldn't be less impressed by it all.

James woke up on the two year anniversary of his final game in his less than comfortable bed in his less than adequate flat. Hearing the alarm give off its typical morning call, he groped a hand out from where he was buried under his blankets. He aimlessly slapped the palm of his hand about the bedside dresser, hoping to eventually smack the button to shut off the alarm. Instead, he brought the palm of his hand down on the alarm at an angle. It was enough to off set where it was seated and cause it to fall to the carpet with a dull 'thud'. James let out a muted cuss under his breath as he moved his arms to cushion the pillow about either side of his head. Now he really didn't want to get up.

Eventually he managed to internally coach himself that getting up was the best thing for him to do. Rolling over onto his back and bringing the pillow away from about his head, he sat up and stared with an unamused look at the pale blue walls of his room. It was a blue that reminded James of an iced lake. He wondered if the designer of this apartment painted the walls that color as some kind of sick joke to remind all tenants that this flat normally remained as cold as a winter's day no matter what you did. Rolling out of the bed and onto his bare feet, he quickly slipped them into the slippers before wrapping a royal blue bathrobe about his person.

Blue. Blue walls. Blue robe. Blue human being.

James frowned. He needed something to numb the dull logic going on in his head. It seemed to be his brain's way of telling him that it still existed, but James ignored it as he padded out to the kitchen. What was the point of anything anymore? He slipped across the floorboards in his slippers as he entered the small kitchen. The design of the cupboard storage was so narrow that James had to kind of slide in sideways to use the coffee machine and then slide out again. He didn't know why he bothered to brew a cup of coffee himself in the morning and go through all the hassle. After all, about an hour or so from then he went down to the coffee place on main street. He supposed that it was a practice at this point. It was just another thing that he had adopted. It was another part that was just the mechanics of how he operated nowadays.

Sliding sideways back out of the kitchen, James moved to plop down on the couch that groaned at him doing so. He reached for a remote to flick the telly on. The screen remained black. He tried the power button again to no avail. He sighed in an over dramatic fashion as he flipped the remote over in his hands and removed the back of it with such haste, he nearly snapped it into pieces.

"Dead batteries. Of course."

Of course there had to be something dead on this two year anniversary. Instead of getting up and fixing his simple problem, James just sat slouched on the couch with the remote upside down in one palm and the dead batteries in the other. After casting his gaze back and forth between the two of them, he eventually moved both hands forward quickly to throw it against the wall. He had no patience to deal with anything that morning, no matter how simple the problem actually was.

He could hear the coffee pot clicking and hissing away in the kitchen as it made his coffee. Standing up, he walked with haste back to the kitchen. He slid sideways into the kitchen, grabbed the coffee pot with both hands, and yanked it forward. The plug came flying out of the wall, and though the semi-hot coffee pot was burning his hands, James kept sliding sideways in a determined fashion until he reached the window over his kitchen sink. He slammed the coffee pot down on the counter momentarily and reached forward to unlock the window and slide it upwards. He then turned, grabbed up the coffee pot again, and hucked it out the window.

"I'm getting dressed," he muttered after the coffee pot had vanished into the white beyond outside, spilling its guts like Sherlock Holmes.

The pretzled, scarlet snow angel.

He slid back out of the kitchen and walked back towards his bedroom. He opened the closet to stare at the neatly arranged rows of clothes staring back at him. Neat. Orderly. Before he knew it, the clothes were flying all about the room; strewn about in complete and utter disarray. When the closet was empty of its contents, he turned sideways to look behind him. The carcasses of the once neat and orderly clothes lay all about himself. Their neat and orderly world had been shattered. Now they lived in chaos.

James moved to walk among the sprawled clothing, pausing once in a while to examine his clothes with a half cocked head. He was trying to determine what the best outfit to wear for the day would be. Eventually he decided upon a beige t-shirt and a pair of faded denim jeans. It was boring, but it might as well be. His life was boring. This was his sentence for all the mischief he had caused throughout his life. His long awaited consequences had finally caught up to him. He supposed it could be worse. He paused after thinking that, before shaking his head. No. This _was_ the worse fate that he could ever imagine for himself.

He carried the clothes with him into the bathroom, which too was small in nature. He tossed the clothes into a pile on the floor before staring at his reflection in the mirror above the sink. He looked awful. Bags hung under his eyes, a result of hardly sleeping a wink for a variety of reasons. He had a five o'clock shadow haunting his jaw and cheeks, rubbing a hand along it to feel it bristle his palm. The eyes that stared back at him, the eyes that had once been wily and full of mischief, now looked completely dull and lifeless. Every day his reflection always seemed to change a bit more. He was sure that soon he wouldn't even recognize his own reflection; that the face staring back at him would be a complete stranger.

He turned away from the face in the mirror and moved towards the shower. He stood under the steady stream of warm water for a long while, letting the water wash over his body and dull all his aches and pains. If only the wash were as cleansing on the inside as it was on the outside. He could look all squeaky clean on the outside, but it wouldn't ever fix the damage the demons in his life had done on the inside. His body resembled a prison in his mind, collected on the outside but dangerous and chaotic within.

He teased his fingers through his hair again and again to try to wash the stubborn soap out, watching the water bubble and slip down the drain. If only all problems were as easily washed away as soap. He soon shut off the now cold water (he swore that nothing stayed hot in this flat for long) and groped for a towel. He ruffled it through his hair first before tying it about his waist. Once again he found himself rooted in front of the mirror, which was now kissed by fog and obscuring the reflection staring back at him; hiding the stranger that stood there.

He began to go about the rest of his preparations for the day in a mindless manner. It was all so boring to him. He hated this. He hated everything. He brushed his teeth and then, admiring the toothbrush for a moment, snapped it in half. He didn't have to, but like his clothes, his coffee pot, and his remote, if he didn't do something outside of the ordinary, he would lose his sanity. His brain would waste away. _He_ would waste away, and though it looked as if he already had become completely empty inside, there was still a part of him that was fighting to hold on.

He threw the snapped toothbrush into the rubbish under the sink and slipped his clothes on. Walking back out of the bathroom, he walked to his coat closet and withdrew a coat that was nearly the same color beige as his t-shirt. It was a corduroy jacket with dark brown patches on both elbows. He grabbed his flat key off the hook near the door and slipped out into the stairwell. His neighbor was already up and seated in a wooden chair outside his own flat. The neighbor was seated in the chair, planting his feet firmly on the banister to tilt the chair back as he smoked a cigarette. James chose to ignore the man as he made sure that his flat was securely locked behind him.

"Well, morning neighbor."

James, still facing away from the man, closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, forcing himself to release a breath. Patience. Patience would be key if he wanted to make sure that he wasn't going to be found guilty of murder. He made sure that he had taken a few deep breaths to try to calm himself down before turning to face the neighbor. The neighbor was staring at him with a smirk around his cigarette. The neighbor extracted the cigarette from his mouth, puffing smoke in the air like a dragon.

"Morning," muttered James finally as if only then remembering his manners.

He balled his hands into fists and shoved them in his jacket pocket. He made to take a step down the stairwell when the neighbor spoke again and made him pause in his steps.

"We got a new neighbor." The man pointed his cigarette down the hall a bit to flat H-26 before he replaced the cigarette in his mouth. James looked down that way as if he were interested by the news, but he was far from it. So there was another person. Yay.

"Wonderful," James moved to take another step down the staircase.

"You're always off in such a rush in the morning," said the man as his chair came down and clicked against the floor. The smell of the cigarettes was getting to James at this point. He needed out before he snapped.

He gripped the banister tightly in his hand as he removed it from the jacket to keep his balance and keep his focus on something aside from his growing irritation.

"I have places to be," he said. He wanted to gripe and be sarcastic. He could feel the sarcasm burning the tip of his tongue. It would be so easy to release that venom on the man, but he restrained himself. But then he thought...

Why _was_ he restraining himself?

He turned back to see the man was looking at him with an amused look, as if he were some interesting oddity. James remained completely passive as he moved to walk back the step or two he had descended to walk over to the man. As he stood in front of him, he noticed that the man was still in his pajamas. This man seemed to not worry about getting anywhere or about anything in general. James pasted a fake smile on his face as he looked at the man.

"Harry, right?"

The man just quirked a brow but nodded his head.

"Harrison Atkinson" he remarked as if the name should mean something or be important to James, which it wasn't.

The Cheshire cat like grin on James' face just continued to grow as he walked closer to the man.

"It must be fun for you, relaxing even, to sit and watch the hall all day."

"Pfft. I don't watch it all day. I have a life too."

"Oh? Do you? I wouldn't ever know. The makeshift ash tray you have aside your chair would suggest otherwise."

Harry cast a sideways glance at the makeshift ash tray that James was talking about. It was a small white saucer with a blue circle around the upper lip of it, and it contained a relatively decent size pile of ash.

"I empty it every day. I like a smoke in the morning. What's wrong with a morning smoke?"  
"Nothing's wrong with it. You're just trading one addiction for another."

"Meaning?"

"Come now. Are you really that dull witted in the morning? Perhaps you'd best lay off the cigarettes now before it does even more damage to your brain."

Now Harry was getting angry. He glowered at James as he leaned forward in his chair.

"What. Do. You. Mean?" He asked, making sure that he enunciated each word as if that would make James feel even more on edge by the whole confrontation.

"You're in your pajamas all day, smoking cigarettes while snubbing it out in a relatively fine china dish. You've traded your addiction to your wife to your cigarette. It dulls the pain, you think. It is a way to calm to the nerves. The wife isn't home. I can be a slob. It's my life now. Lets wreck the china. Lets be a creep and watch people all day, ask them where they are going and watching them move in." James walked forward and snatched the still lit cigarette from Harry's hands. He moved the burning tip close to the sleeve of the man's pajama, pressing it into it so it started to burn a hole. "How about you leave people well enough alone and mind your own business?"

"Hey. Hey. Hey!" Harry's voice rose higher and higher as he became more and more panicked at the site of his pajama sleeve getting burned. He reached out a hand to try to slap James' hand away, knocking the cigarette down onto the floor. "What are you doing? Are you insane?"

"Nah. I'm charitable," he remarked as he stomped Harry's cigarette underfoot in order to put it out. "I just gave you something to do. Looks like your pajama could use a bit of mending."

James smirked widely at Harry's very shocked and bewildered face as he turned to walk back towards the stairwell. Before he could begin walking down the steps though, he felt as if someone aside from the now angry Harry was looking at him. Turning to look behind him, he saw that the door to flat H-26 was open. A man stood in the door looking straight at him and Harry. The man, if he had been standing to his full height instead of slouching in the manner he was, would have probably filled out most of the doorway. Even though he was slouched, James could tell this man was muscular. His muscles were straining against the white t-shirt he was currently wearing. The white t-shirt and gray sweatpants was all the man was wearing. It had probably, in all likelihood, been what he had worn to bed. James just stared back at the new neighbor staring back at him for a minute or two before turning to leave. He could still feel the man's eyes boring into his head as he walked down the stairs to the sound of Harry cussing up a storm. Another curious neighbor that he might have to deal with at some point, but not right now. Right now he had a hot date with a cup of coffee at his favorite coffee diner. It was time for him to fall back into his normal patterns for the day. As he reached out a hand to open the door, the cold morning air came in to attack his cheeks with kisses. Now he had to put James Moriarty away and be Baxter Hunt again. He sighed heavily at that prospect, moving to walk down the street towards his coffee cafe.

James arrived at the coffee place to see the normal clientele already there. The normal clientele were a few elder people who spent a majority of their day here sipping coffee and watching news off the telly that hung suspended by a metal rack of sorts from the wall behind the bar. He moved to take a seat at his normal booth at the back of the cafe so that he could remain completely free of questions or prying eyes. He just wanted a cup of coffee and to be left in peace for a little bit. That was an odd desire for James to have, but it was there all the same. He used to pride himself on disturbing the peace and now he was here wanting peace.

The world was certainly an odd place.

A waitress came over to him. It was the same waitress that normally came to take his order. She seemed to have a motherly feeling about her. She reminded James a lot of his mother. It was a painfully sore subject for him, so he didn't dwell on it long. He afforded her a quick smile as she asked him what he'd like to order this morning.

"The usual," remarked James, tapping his hands on the menu that he hadn't even bothered to flip open.

His eyes flicked briefly from her face to look at the crooked name tag that displayed the name 'Anna'. The name was partly hidden under a variety of 'things'. It was hard for James to narrow in on what was exactly messing up her name tag, but it certainly did go to prove that she had worked there for a long time. James wouldn't have been able to imagine staying put for so long before these last two years. Now he understood. At some point in her life, she must have realized that the best thing for her to do was to stay put; that there wasn't anything left that life had to offer her.

"I'll have that order right out for you," Anna said with a smile James' way before disappearing.

James sighed as he sank back in the booth, staring about the drab interior of the place. The teal and brown wallpaper that was suppose to make the interior of the cafe seem cozy only seemed to clash with the white tiles on the floor. Warmth and cold couldn't coexist for long. This attempt at making that do so just made it all clash. James felt like the whole cafe could use a bit of redecorating, but he didn't bother saying anything. After all, what was the point?

He flicked his eyes to look at the telly that hung suspended off the wall in the corner. It was displaying some sort of muted news program. He could see the reporter's lips moving, but no words coming out. Instead, there were lines of subtitles appearing on the screen to tell those watching what they were saying. James smirked as his eyes caught sight of, what had to be, mistranslated words. Things could definitely be lost in translation, even if you were speaking the same language. Look at him and Sherlock. He had wanted to play a game with him. He'd given him all the clues, and it had gotten completely fudged up in translation. Sherlock really thought killing himself was the way to win. That or Sherlock had been like him. Sherlock could have thought James dead and offed himself because there wasn't any point in existing anymore.

The coffee and bagel were brought over, momentarily snapping James back into reality. With a quiet 'thank you' to Anna, he began to tuck into his breakfast. He kept half an eye on the news playing while he ate; the other half of his mind occupied on what he would do with the rest of his day. He'd go to work, work for several hours with the same types of boring people buying the same normal things, then he'd go home to his cold flat and lie freezing, staring up at the ceiling as he waited for sleep to grace him. How sad that, that was what his life had come to.

The mute reporter caught James' eye then and his concentration went back to the screen. The reporter was now standing outside Scotland Yard in London. James wondered what crime was going on now that concerned the whole of Scotland Yard and Detective Inspector Lestrade and his crew. It couldn't nearly be as fascinating as his crimes had been for them to solve. They must all be as bored as he was nowadays. Not his problem anymore though. Sherlock had started this domino effect of boredom by killing himself.

The banner under the reporter almost made James choke on the bite of bagel that he currently had housed in his mouth. That couldn't be right. Surely this was also something that got lost in translation or screwed up at their headquarters. This couldn't be real. Perhaps he was still asleep in his flat even. He had to be constructing the whole thing up in his imagination. However, even after dragging a hand over his face to "wake himself up", the image on the screen remained the same. James' face turned white as he stood up from the table, forgetting his normal breakfast.

"Turn that off mute," he remarked as he walked towards the coffee bar.

"Excuse me?" asked a waitress who had just finished setting another pot of coffee to brew.

"I said turn that off mute," said James with a bit more acidity to his tone then. The one man that was seated at the coffee bar instead of a booth turned to give him an odd look, but he didn't care.

"Do as he asks," remarked Anna as she came back out of the kitchen then.

She always seemed to be in James' corner like his mother had been.

The waitress shrugged her shoulders and went to press the volume button to take it off mute. James moved to lean against the coffee bar as his eyes watch the reporter get his voice back.

"We are waiting on the Yard to give a statement about the case, or what's even more baffling to us all, Sherlock Holmes' apparent resurrection from the dead. Sherlock Holmes had passed away about two years ago, or so we have all thought. Sherlock Holmes is alive, which may be more important than the case."

Sherlock Holmes. Alive. Breathing air. Not a pretzled snow angel, but alive and living among the angels.

James shoved away from the coffee bar and went back to his booth where his coffee was. He quickly rifled through his pocket for change to pay for it, slamming it down onto the table before moving to leave. He rushed through the cold air; his mind running full speed trying to make sense of it. The great detective had fooled him. He was alive. All this time he spent wallowing and feeling bad for himself was for nothing. He'd been torturing himself all this time for nothing. He slipped a hand into his pocket and dug out his mobile.

"Tell me who the man was," remarked James as he turned off into an alley to lean his back up against the cold bricks.

"I told you, sir, we don't know," stated a voice in a thick accent.

James chuckled, looking up at the gray sky above him. He should have known this before. He should have been sharper than this. He used to be.

"Don't tell me you don't know. This man has been going after my webs for the last year or so, and I've let him. What does he look like? Surely one of you numbskulls has at least seen this man to know he exists."

"Well...he had long black hair the time I saw him. Took a rough beatin', but was gone when I went to check on him."

"And why was that?"

"Said something to the man beatin' him. Said something that made him leave because he thought his wife was cheating..."

Well how about that. It was really him. All this time he had thought the man dead, and he had been stripping away the last of the dignity that he had, had behind his back. Instead of answering who he had on the line, he chucked his cell phone at the brick wall to shatter it. So Sherlock thought he could one up him all this time. Be a greater mastermind, a better 'showman', than he was. Well, he'd see about that. Or would he? He had let himself rot internally for the last two years. Perhaps he didn't have it in him anymore. But no. The longer that James stood in the cold, staring at the carcass of his mobile, the more he knew that he still did have it in him, and he was going to come back and make Sherlock pay for what he'd done; for the torture that he had made James endure this whole time.

James moved to walk back towards his flat with a renewed vigor. He just had to start formulating a plan, but it had to be brilliant. It had to surpass any plan that he had ever made in the past. It had to be completely genius and something that no one, the Yard or Sherlock, saw coming. He pushed open the door and took the steps up the staircase two at a time. Harry was no longer where he'd been sitting that morning, but his chair remained along with his makeshift ash tray. James smirked. Oh glorious day. This was a day of redemption for him. He moved to pick up Harry's chair and ashtray, chucking them down the stairs. The ash floated through the air as it tumbled down into a heap at the base of the stairs like delicate black snow. It blanketed the steps in a thin layer of snowy ash, causing James to grin.

The door to H-26 was open again, and the new neighbor was once again staring down the hall at James. He was still wearing what he'd been wearing an hour or so ago, having his arms crossed across his chest.

"Are you enjoying yourself?" He heard the neighbor ask in a relatively baritone tone of voice.

In the sunlight coming through the window in the stairwell now, he could see that this neighbor wore a worse haunted look than James ever had. His face conveyed loud and clear that he too had given up on something. Was this complex where all people with lost hopes and dreams came to die?

Well, that'd no longer be the case with him.

"I am quite enjoying myself, thank you very much," said James with a grand smile before unlocking his flat and slamming the door shut behind him.

James stopped caring then about how cold his flat was, or the fact that he had broken several things in his flat before leaving. All he could think about was how Sherlock was alive. He threw himself down onto his bed, eyes looking up at the ceiling. His world had finally been shaken up again when he had last expected it. Before he knew it, the ceiling was black and he was asleep. The rush of adrenaline had left him at last.


	3. Chapter 2: A Million Dreams

A six-year-old James Moriarty sat on the floor of his bedroom, playing with his prized toy car. His family couldn't afford much, so the fact that he had gotten this toy brand new on his birthday last month meant the world to him. He knew that his parents (his mother especially) had been saving up for that for him for a while. It was his one prized possession. He played with it gently every time that he had it out to use, and put it away just as gently when he was done. As he sat on the floor driving the car in circles, he could smell his mother cooking downstairs. It smelled like soup, and by soup he knew that it would be more broth than anything. Again, he was okay with that. It was better than not eating at all. They would make ends meet well enough.

He heard the door squeak open and slam shut downstairs. His father was home from work. He crept into the hallway and made his way towards the kitchen. He was planning on going to say "hello", but that plan was cut short when he reached their living room and heard the yelling going on in the kitchen. He ducked off into the living room and stayed there with bated breath, listening to it all.

"Soup again?"

"It's all we can afford. It's a tight paycheck this week."

"That seems to be the excuse _every time._ "

"How was work?" James heard his mother ask as a way to change subjects, but he knew that wouldn't work. Methods like that never worked on his father, who always seemed to like to stew about things.

"Work was work," muttered his father before saying, "We'd be better off if we hadn't had him, you know."

James wasn't stupid. He knew who the "him" applied to.

"You and I both had a dream of getting married and starting a family."

"No. I had a dream to marry you and give you a good life. You complicated the matters by getting pregnant. I never wanted a child. That was _your_ dream and you just dragged me along with you."

James hadn't realized that his hands were clenched into tiny fists as hot tears ran down his face.

"Don't say things like that."

"I can say whatever I please. You know that's the truth. Why? Why did you have to do that to a man?"

"James was not a mistake. You are acting like our having him was."

"Our having him has made us broke. Do you realize where we'd be if we didn't have him? We'd be so well off, babe, that we wouldn't even need to eat soup. We'd have it made."

"I'm not sorry about any of this. We have a roof above our heads, food in our stomachs, and a little boy that loves us."

"You should be sorry. I think my greatest mistake of all was being the fool to fall in love with you. Never knew you were so...weak willed."

"Take that back..."

"No! I won't because it's true! I think you love our son more than you love me!"

"Take that back..."

James heard a crash as the soup pan fell off the stove and clattered to the floor.

"SAY IT! SAY YOU LOVE HIM MORE!"

"Stop it! Stop it!"

James couldn't take it anymore. He couldn't just stand there and listen to his mother put up with that. He kept his hands into little fists as he made his way into the kitchen. He stood in the doorway to see that his father had his mother backed up into the stove; her hand dangerously near the still on burner where the soup pan had been just moments ago.

"Leave her alone."

Though he was trembling inside, his voice didn't portray it. It sounded cold, distant and detached. His father turned from his mother then to look his way. James watched his father stare icy cold daggers at him, but that didn't cause James to shrink away. He actually stood with a stiffer back, glaring back in the same icy measure at his father.

"What did you say to me?"

"I said leave her alone."

His father pushed away from his mother then as he moved to get closer to James.

"James, you shouldn't get involved in adult matters. You're still young."

"I'm young, but not dumb," he remarked with more wisdom than a six-year-old normally possessed. "Now you leave her alone. I love you both, but not when you are an idiot like this. You're a bully."

His father's eyes grew round. He was shocked at the words leaving his six-year-old's mouth. He honestly didn't believe that his son was capable of coming up with such thoughts on his own. His father turned to look back at his mother, who was bent over trying to scrub the soup off the floor.

"Look what you've taught him. You've turned him against me."

The meticulous floor scrubbing came to a halt then as she looked up and over at her husband.

"I never put any such ideas in his head. I would never speak of you in that way."

"Then where did he get the ideas from then, huh? He's much too dumb to have learned that on his own."

Something inside James, something he hadn't realized was buried in him before, snapped. He grabbed his father by the wrist to gain his attention again.

"You're the one who is dumb speaking the way you are. You're going to be the one to ruin this family."

His father snapped then, bringing back a hand to slap James hard across the cheek. Though the slap was painful, and sent him tumbling back into the kitchen wall slightly, he didn't cry. He just wore a passive look on his face. He rubbed a hand over his bruising cheek as he looked at his father, who seemed shocked that he had just done that.

"You just proved me right," said James then as he left the kitchen to go back to his bedroom to hide.

That incident, if it really could even be called that, was the beginning of the end of things. That was the day that James had lost any childish innocence he still had. His car was tucked away under his bed, never to be played with again. Instead he stayed in the living room with one of the few books that they had. Though they were far above his reading level, he tried to read them anyway so that he could keep an eye out for his father and his raging temper. Eventually, in trying to read the words even a little bit, he was able to vaguely understand the sentences. He began a practice of reading a few lines of a paragraph before going to look up any unfamiliar vocabulary in the dictionary. James soon surpassed where a child of his age should be in terms of knowledge simply from forcing himself to read as he kept an eye out for his father.

When James turned eleven, his mother became deathly sick and his father got even worse than he had before. The medical bills started to pile up and their living situation was even tighter than before. His father was gone most nights, off drinking or what not. His father had said that if they were going to lose it all, he might as well make things easier for himself by numbing it all. James was left alone to tend to his mother who soon became bed-ridden because of how dire things had become so quickly. They said that it was stage four cancer. It was untreatable. It was a terror that was eating her from within, and fight as she might, she would inevitably lose.

"James..." she said one night as he brought in a tray with food on it for her. Her bony fingers patted a spot on the bed by her side. "Come have a seat please. There are some things I have to tell you."

James put the tray he was carrying down on the bedside table before having a seat where his mother told him to. Her fingers reached out to take one of his hands in hers, and he could see tears faintly and silently running down her face.

"You have been my greatest pride and joy. You are the best thing that has come out of my relationship with your father..." She paused then, rubbing a thumb over the back of his hand. "Please James, don't blame him. He means well. He just doesn't know how to express his feelings as well as I do. You must try to understand."

"I understand that he is off drinking instead of being here with you. I understand that he resents me and wishes I would have never been born." He looked away from his mother then. He could see the hurt in her eyes caused by his words, but the last sentence he was about to say was already in the process of being formed and left his mouth before he could stop it, "And I understand that after you're gone, I will be on my own."

"Please don't say such things," she said in a broken voice. "It breaks a mother's heart to hear her child say such words."

James felt his mother's hand move from his own hand to his cheek.

"Your father may be rather boarish, and I'm very sad to see how he has made you grow up so fast in order to be the man of the house, but deep down he really does love you. He's just wired differently. It's hard for him to communicate it."

James knew that his mother truly believed what she said, but he knew that it wasn't true. If his father loved either of them, he would have been there for them both. He would have made them feel important. James just decided to let that topic die with a small nod of his head before changing subjects.

"I was going to take you away from here someday, you know. When I was old enough and saved some money. I was going to take you to the Abbey Gardens. Right to the exact spot that you have framed in a painting in the living room."

She smiled softly at that, once more grabbing James' hand in her own.

"That's what your father had promised. I swear, you have the best parts of him in you. You have the parts that I fell in love with."

She paused then as she gripped his hand with all the strength that she had left to muster.

"I'm sorry that I put you through all this. You deserve a good life, James. Please live the best life you can."

"Stop talking like this," he commanded his mother, grabbing her hand tighter in his. He locked his eyes with yours. "You are staying here with me. I'm taking you to the Abbey Gardens. It's not time yet."

She didn't bother answering James. Instead she just gave him a faint smile as her grip on his hand became increasingly weaker. Before James even realized it, he was the only one left holding hands. His mother's muscles had relaxed to the point where it was no longer holding on to his hand. James wanted to cry, but instead he just stared at her in a passive manner. Internally he was screaming and breaking apart. How could she leave him? She was suppose to hold on. She was suppose to hold out.

When his father returned that night, he was more tipsy than normal. He leaned heavily in the doorway to the bedroom to observe the scene before his eyes. James had allowed himself to grieve a tiny bit while his father was still out, but now was emotionless again as he looked at his father.

"Ha. Knew she was weak willed, and you...Momma's boy...Look at you all by her bedside. What a kiss up."

"She was not weak willed. You are. Drinking to try to erase your problems. You are the child. You should have been here for her. You should have been here for us. We deserve better."

"Excuse me?" said his father with a drunken chuckle, eyes widening a bit as he half staggered into the room. "Repeat yourself because I'm sure that my ears are deceiving me. Surely you haven't just said what I thought you did."

"You are drunk, not deaf. I won't repeat myself."

"Where did you get your courage, stupid child?"

James' eyes searched his father's as he came staggering ever closer to him. He saw the handle of his father's pocket knife jutting up out of his pocket and steadied himself. He would wait for the perfect moment like he had learned about.

"ANSWER ME!"

Even with his father standing no more than a few inches from him, screaming in his face until his spittle hit him full on, he didn't flinch at all. He merely pasted a small smirk onto his face, cocking his head to the side. His eyes, that should have been full of childish life, were filled with anger and a burning evil of some sort. He waited until his father's staggering landed him on his right leg for balance before taking his opportunity.

His father, after leaning more heavily on his right leg as if he were about to tip over, took an aimless punch at James. Of course it hit nothing but air. James ducked under the punch, slipping his small and agile body off to the side. Nimbly his hands had his father's pocket knife in his hands. It took nothing for him to flip the blade out and come around the backside of his father. He soon positioned himself directly behind his father. He had one arm go about his father's neck while the other arm pressed the tip of the pocket knife into it. The action stunned his father, even in his drunken rage like state, to fall still in shock. His father was on his knees, panting heavily.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Look at her," whispered James as he kept his hold steady.

"What?"

"I SAID LOOK AT HER!"

Despite himself, he could feel the tears silently sneaking down his face in hot lines. Luckily he would be the only one with knowledge of his tears since his father was facing forward. He slackened the knife a bit so that his father could turn his head to face his mother before pressing the tip into the neck again.

"Look at her. She's dead. Do you understand that? Can you get that through your thick skull? She loved you. She put up with you because she loved you, and you treated her like trash. Say you're sorry."

"What?..."

"Stop being so stupid! Being drunk is absolutely no excuse. APOLOGIZE!"

He pressed the tip of the knife into his father's neck a bit more to prove how serious he was about wanting this apology out of him.

"S-sorry," He stuttered out.

"No. Mean it. After all you've done to hurt her, you can apologize better than that."

"I'm sorry..." He said, sounding sober even though it wasn't possible for him to be sober yet.

"Much better," said James who was still not relaxing his hand with the knife.

"You planning on killing me?" asked his father then in a relatively calm voice, still staying in his position.

"Killing you would be a kindness. It would help you escape the pain you caused. Mother got to escape the pain. She is happier now than she ever was here, but you...I want to watch you suffer. I want to see you realize your mistakes and realize you are far too late to do anything about it."

He released his father then, still holding the knife as he backed away from him. He was ready for any slap that might come his way. He knew that his father became beastly when he was drunk, even more so than normal. Instead of lashing out at him in anger though, his father, who was still on his knees by his mother's bedside, turned his head to look at James. Tears were brimming in his eyes.

"Get out..." He said in a deadly low tone of voice. "Get out of _my_ house."

His father paused for a minute as if to collect himself before forcing himself back upright. He pointed a finger out the door.

"Get out. Didn't you hear me? I don't know what she ever saw in you, but I have never seen you as my son and I'm certainly not about to now. Not after that. Get out of my house before I call the police on you. That's my one kindness to you."

James just stared back at his father as he kept the pocket knife at his side. After the two of them silently stared at each other for a minute, James turned to leave. He stopped by his bedroom momentarily to pack what little things he felt like carrying with him. He found a small carpet bag in the closet and dragged it out. He packed a few articles of clothing and the car his mother had given him. It was the last piece of his childhood innocence and he was bound and determined to carry it about with him for as long as he could.

"Get out! Didn't you hear me?"

He looked over to see his father now lingering in his bedroom doorway. His father's face was a mixture of emotions. He couldn't tell which emotion was reigning at the moment, nor did he care. After all, his father was throwing him out. He knew that he could report his father to child protective services, but that could end up badly. He wouldn't want to be put in a foster home with fake people trying to pretend they cared about him. He was done pretending. He wanted to embrace who he was now, no matter how damaged a person that happened to be.

He ignored his father in the doorway as he slowly closed the carpet bag up. He could have closed it up faster, but he didn't want his father to be relaxed so easily. He stood up slowly, clutching the carpet bag in one hand. He moved towards the closet to grab his coat out of it, putting the carpet bag down momentarily to put it on. Once he was ready, he walked towards the door with his bag. His father stuck out an arm to stop him, causing James to have to make eye contact with him.

"You know how I've felt about you. Ever since you were born really, and I can see that I have a just cause for feeling the way that I do. After all, look what you almost did to your own father. I have no idea what she saw in you."

James turned his face away then. Not to hide any sadness, of course. It was true that he had known that his father had despised him all along. He had, had the time to get over that sort of pain. No, he turned away from his father then because he had nothing left to say. All he wanted to do was dig his father's pocket knife out of the carpet bag and slit his throat with it. It was too much of a kindness though. His father didn't deserve kindness. He deserved to suffer.

"...And the knife...I want the knife back."

James had been so consumed in his thoughts that he hadn't realized that his father had been continuing to tell him what a disappointment he was. The knife...no. No he wouldn't give it back.

"You took the only thing that I ever loved, and who ever loved me," said James in a relatively monotone tone of voice. "So I'm taking one of the only things you love, though I don't know which you love more. Your alcohol or your knife. I know it's not me. It was never me and that's okay. I don't need you."

His father, starting to let the more drunken part of him take over now, began to cuss a blue streak at him. James remained with his face turned away and moved to walk down the hall. He had reached the front door and just had put his hand on the handle to greet the night outside, when he heard a faint whistling past his ear. That faint whistle was followed by a loud crash. His father had thrown an empty beer bottle at him. The bottle seemed to explode as it greeted the door frame; the fragments flying every which way. One of the pieces slid past his cheek, cutting it a bit. He could feel the fresh, sharp sting followed by a warmth sliding down his cheeks. He paused with his hand still on the door, reaching up to touch his cheek. He better not be showing how scared he was. He'd better not be crying right here, right now, in front of the one man he never wanted to look weak in front of again. His fingers sought out the warmth and finally found it. As he brought his fingertips in front of his face, he saw the dark maroon color painted on his fingertips. Blood, not tears. He grinned despite how the injury smarted some. He didn't look weak. He looked tough.

He moved to throw open the door with all the strength he could muster at eleven years old. The promise of snow had been hanging in the air all day long and now its threat was carried out. This night, his first night on his own, would definitely be a cold one. He heard the door snap shut and then snap back open. He thought the wind might have caught it. Good. His father could freeze with his cold heart.

"JAMES!"

He didn't hear the footsteps catching up to him; didn't realize that his father reached out to hold his wrist until he was gripping it tightly. James froze where he stood, but still kept his eyes trained away from his father. There was absolutely no way that he was looking back now that his mother was gone.

"The knife. I want the..."

"NO!" James shouted; the outside world seeming to amplify his voice. "No! I am not giving you your knife back!" He yanked his arm forward then to jerk it free from his father's grasp. "For once, you will not get what you want."

He moved to walk forward once more, sincerely doubting that his father would try to come after him yet again. He doubted that, that knife meant _that_ much to him. He was right too. He made it to the end of their small drive and had taken a right towards where the heart of the city lie without having been stopped again. As he walked, he thought about how sad it was that he had to think that his father wouldn't come after the knife; how he would never think, not in a million years, that his father would ever come after him. No matter. He knew how to survive. He was a smart man. He'd find some way to survive.

He made it to a city street in London as the snow came down even harder than before. He had no idea what street, but it didn't matter. All he really cared about was finding some place to hide away for the night and preferably somewhere where the snow wouldn't touch him. He saw an alley up ahead and made for it. The alley was still getting hit by the snow, but not nearly as hard as the street itself. There was a garbage bin pressed up against one of the walls of the alley, and James made for that. He sank down behind it, half huddling up to it for warmth. By this point, his teeth were chattering and his hands and feet were numb. Even though he was wearing a coat, it wasn't the warmest thing in the world. They honestly hadn't had much, but it was something. It was something...

He sat against the wall, curling his legs up under his chin; the carpet bag on his lap so that it was pressed up against his stomach. He had to tune out the cold. The more that he dwelt on it, the colder he would feel. Besides, it wouldn't do anything to fix the situation that he found himself in at the moment. He would have to deal with this the best he could. His mother was gone. His father wanted him gone. He had no one to care about him. Perhaps it was better that way.

James didn't know how long he was asleep against the wall behind the dumpster like some ill-forgotten piece of rubbish. All he knew was that, when he opened his eyes, he was covered in a fine layer of white snow, almost as if the snow had morphed into a blanket in a vain attempt to warm his chilled bones. He moved to try to stretch, only seeming to notice then that there was a policeman standing there watching him. The officer had his com out and was evidently radioing in when he noticed James stir.

"Well, you _are_ still conscious. I thought you were in need of paramedics."

The policeman released hold on his com device then, putting it away as he moved closer to James. James just watched him closely. This man looked young. He couldn't be more than twenty-five years old. His dark brown eyes looked relatively innocent still, more innocent than James at eleven. James had already seen too much that would stay and scar him for the rest of his life.

"How's about you come with me?"

He watched the man pause a few feet away from him, offering out a hand to him. He ought to take it. He was chilled to the bone, and knew that sickness was simply right around the corner. His father had kicked him out. This would be his only saving grace.

"I'm fine," He got out as he forced himself to stand up. Even though every bone in his body ached at the action, he forced himself onto his feet so that the policeman wouldn't get suspicious. "I fell asleep while I was waiting for my father to pick me up. I must have missed my ride home."

"Well then I'll take you. Come."

"No. It's fine. Don't trouble yourself. It's just a few blocks away. I can walk there in no time."

The policeman didn't seemed to know whether or not he could trust this young boy in front of him that looked as if he were about to die from hypothermia. James himself was surprised at the rate at which lies were leaving his mouth. He never realized what a good liar he was. He hated and loved how natural it was to him, and how convincing he really sounded.

James moved to start walking then after thanking the policeman anyway for his consideration. He began to walk down the sidewalk, making sure that he was being careful as he picked his way along. The snow had never stopped since he left his former home and it had now caused things to ice over in the night. Amongst the wintry air whistling past him, he could hear the low grumble of a car engine behind him. He didn't turn around to look to confirm his suspicions. Instead he looked in the darkened shopping windows and saw the reflection of a car slowly crawling along the road behind him. Yes. The policeman was definitely young and new. He was horrible at following someone.

James knew that he had to make good on his bluff now that he was being followed. He forced his chilled body to walk a few more blocks, aimlessly looking about. He had to pray against all hopes that he'd find somewhere to duck inside that looked like his place and that the front door would be unlocked. He kept walking and stopped when he saw a house off to his left that was smashed between all the other buildings. It was a building that was no doubt divided into multiple flats. He stepped up the few steps to greet the black door, and shoved into it with his body. It opened. He internally rejoiced and stepped inside.

He shut the door behind him and leaned against it, breathing a sigh of relief. Now he wasn't being tailed. Now he was warm too. The warmth washed over him in waves as he stayed there. The warmth was making him so sleepy, but he knew that he couldn't stay. He could only stay until he thought that the coast was clear and then he would have to leave before anyone spotted him there.

"My, my. Who's this?"

James looked up and saw that an older woman had suddenly appeared in the hallway. She was standing there and looking at him with her apron on over her pink floral dress. Her short gray hair was curled up on her head, and her kind eyes looked at the shivering child before her. She motioned at him with her hand.

"Follow me. Let me get you something warm to drink to warm you up."

Like the policeman, James didn't want to follow her. He wanted to tell her that he was fine and was fully intending to until he saw a boy his age with curly black hair suddenly appear behind the woman.

"Who's that?" he heard the boy ask; his blue eyes wide with curiosity.

"A new friend," she replied to the boy as a second woman came out of the door that was at the end of the hall. There were so many people.

"You were suppose to stay in the kitchen," the second woman said, admonishing the child and his curiosity.

"I wanted to know who was at the door."

"Well, now you do. Now come back to the kitchen and finish the dinner that Mrs. Hudson has generously cooked for us tonight. Remember, you promised me that you would be good tonight. You could have stayed home with your other siblings, but you insisted on coming."

"Because the two of them are so boring. They just lounge about the place."

"At any rate, come back to the kitchen. I'm sure that Mrs. Hudson will coax our young guest into joining us."

James would have refused. This was all too overwhelming in the face of everything that he had dealt with that day, but it was so warm and the boy...the boy intrigued him. He wanted to learn more about him. So, despite himself, he stepped forward towards the woman that had been identified as Mrs. Hudson.

"Thank you," he managed to mumble out as he followed the three of them back out into the kitchen.

Once they arrived back out in the small kitchen, he noticed that the boy returned to his chair off in the corner, picking his plate off the seat. It was as if he'd been placed in the naughty corner, but he knew that it was simply because the kitchen was small and the table wouldn't hold that many people. James, not realizing that he was shivering, moved to sit down in the chair beside the boy that had been provided him. He watched Mrs. Hudson move towards the stove to get him something to eat and drink while the other woman left the room to look for a blanket for him to bundle in. For the moment, he and the boy were left to their own devices. Before James could say anything to the boy, (not that he even knew what to say), he heard the boy ask, "Glass or knife?"

He was so bewildered by the boy's question that, for a moment, he just sat shocked into silence. The boy looked up from the plate of food that he was picking at to look at James with those bright blue eyes again. He moved to point a finger at the gash on James' check that James had forgotten about.

"Glass or knife," he asked again quietly. "Your gash has the consistency to have been cut by something precise yet sharp. The clean cut like nature of it though suggests that the cut was an accident, but what caused it? Am I close with either guess?"

"Glass," said James then, reaching up a hand to touch the since scabbed over gash. It had felt like it had happened just minutes ago, but James knew that it had happened several hours ago. He didn't know exactly how long though. He wasn't sure how long he'd been sleeping out in the cold before the policeman found him.

The boy just nodded his head before returning to his plate of food, trying to eat some more. This boy was like him. He was obviously smart. He must be well read, but it was obvious that he came from a more loving environment than he had. It looked as if the boy almost resented it. If only the boy knew that he was lucky to have such people in his life.

"What's your name?" he asked the boy next to him, hearing something begin to boil on the stove.

The boy looked back over at him then before shifting the plate so that he had the ability to hold out a hand towards him.

"Sherlock Holmes. What's yours?"

He looked at the outstretched hand and reached to grip it in his. He held it gently, shaking it.

"James Moriarty."

"Nice to meet you," Sherlock said, shaking his hand and then letting it go.

Before James could say anything else, he heard the clicking of footsteps. The second woman reappeared holding a brown wool blanket. It looked so thick and warm. As it was placed delicately about his shoulders, he practically huddled into it. He could feel his eyelids drooping. He was beginning to unthaw and he was ready to sleep now. However, whatever was cooking on the stove at the moment smelled so good. So very good. He could feel his stomach gurgling and growling, urging him to stay awake long enough to consume the source of the smell.

He watched with half opened eyes as Mrs. Hudson moved to ladle something out of a pot and into a bowl. That had to be the source of the smell. She was soon walking towards him with a bowl in her hands. She became alarmed when she saw how half drooped over and sleepy he was.

"My goodness, dear."

She moved to set the bowl aside, reaching out a gentle and gnarled hand to touch his cheek. Even though he was cold, he knew that she could tell he was burning up. Perhaps he was sick. He'd been out in the cold for so long...if he caught fever, maybe he'd be sick and die. Like his mother. After all, though she had, had cancer, she'd been perfectly fine one day and gone the next. It wasn't fair. None of this was fair...

"Sweetie, you need to wake up and warm your bones. Get something good in your stomach."

He hadn't realized that his eyes had snapped shut until he came around. The room was a bit blurry now, but Mrs. Hudson was crouched near him with a spoon near his mouth.

All he wanted was sleep. Couldn't he just sleep? Even for a minute. He was sweating under the blanket, but yet shivering at the same time. Sleep. Sleep would fix it all.

He felt the spoon touch his lip, coaxing them to open. He opened his mouth so as not to offend the woman and felt a warm broth begin to run down his throat. That felt amazing. It tasted even better. He couldn't remember the last time he'd tasted anything so good. He was so used to having soup growing up, but this was different. This was magical. His mother had made soup so often. His mother had loved him. She'd been the only one that had. Now she was gone.

He didn't remember eating anymore of the soup. He was too out of it. All he remembered was the now empty bowl being set aside followed by someone gently putting their arm about his waist to help him to his feet.

"Come on, sweetie. You need to help a woman out. I don't have the strength to carry you up the stairs."

James tried to put one foot in front of the other as he felt himself being led down the hall. He heard a door creak open, showing a world of darkness to him. He was gently laid to rest on a soft mattress and could hear it creaking and groaning under him. Sleep. Was it okay to sleep now? Even if it wasn't, he needed it. His body was screaming at him to sleep. Before he realized it, he fell out of touch with the rest of the world and passed out cold.

* * *

When he woke up, it was still dark outside. Was this night everlasting or had he simply slept through a few days? He had been in a dead sleep too, so why was he awake now? It was then that he noticed Sherlock sitting in a chair beside his bed. There was a small lamp on and Sherlock was reading a book. He shifted in the bed, trying to use his elbows to prop him up enough to compel him to sit up. The bed creaked under him at his efforts, causing Sherlock to look over at him.

"What are you doing here?" moaned out James, taking a second to shake sleep's hold of him as he sat up and leaned against the headboard.

"I came in here while my Mum talks with Mrs. Hudson," remarked Sherlock as he looked at James.

"How long have you been sitting there?"

"Just a little bit now. For seeming really out of it earlier, you certainly ask a lot of questions," observed Sherlock as he allowed the book in his hands to snap shut before focusing all his attention on the boy in front of him again.

James just shrugged. His body still hurt, but he was warm. That was something that was unexpected and nice.

"What's with the car?" asked Sherlock suddenly then.

"What car?" asked James, shocked out of the silence that had momentarily settled between the two of them.

"The one that is in your carpet bag in the hallway that you carried in with you."

Wait...while he'd be dead to the world, this child had gone through his things? The only things that he really had in this world? He felt a mixture of emotions course through him then. Part of him was upset that the boy had been going through his things while the other part of him was amused that the boy seemed to be wired towards curiosity like he was. To answer Sherlock's question, he merely shrugged his shoulders.

"It's one of my favorite belongings. I wanted to have it with me."

Sherlock just nodded his head back, seeming to accept that answer.

"What about the knife?"

James' blood ran cold. The last thing he knew, the knife had been tucked into his pocket. Had it fallen out when he'd been led to the bedroom? Had they found it on the ground? Even if they had, it was a pocket knife. Nothing suspicious, right? It wasn't like there was blood on it or anything.

"The knife?"

"Yeah. The knife that is in your pocket."

Sherlock moved forward then, slipping his hand into James' coat like it was perfectly okay and natural to do so. He brought the slightly unfolded pocket knife out and showed James what he was talking about.

"You went through my pockets while I was asleep?"

"I saw there was something in your pocket and I was curious."

That kind of curiosity would get Sherlock killed.

"Word to the wise, don't touch other people's belongings," said James in a rather snappy way, reaching forward to snatch the pocket knife back from Sherlock's grasp.

"You didn't answer my question," remarked Sherlock as he watched James return the pocket knife to his pocket.

"You don't need to know everything," said James.

That was rather ironic for him to say as he prided himself on learning everything possible under the sun. If the situation was reversed, James wasn't sure that he wouldn't do the same thing.

Sherlock just shrugged and stood up from his seat. James was surprised that Sherlock didn't put up a fight. James chose to ignore it though as the sleepiness housed in his body started to win over him again. It would take nothing at all for James to just lie back down and forget everything. If he was honest, that's all he wanted. That was what the best thing was about sleeping. The dreams. With dreams, you really could be happy. Sometimes you had the nightmares, but even the nightmares were better in dreams than in real life. In dreams, nightmares would disappear in the end. The ones in reality wouldn't.

James didn't realize that he had fallen asleep again until he noticed it wasn't so dark in the room that he was flat on his back. He turned his head off to the side to notice that Sherlock's book was sitting on the chair, but not the boy. As he turned his head a bit more, he noticed that, amongst the early morning gray coating the entire room, that the door to the hall was open a crack.

He moved to get up out of the bed and walk towards the door. As he did, he paused when he could hear the whispering in the hallway.

"And you're sure what he found was real and not a toy?"

"Sherlock knows the difference. It was a real knife. That boy...I don't know where he came from, but you can't offer him a home like you were thinking of last night. It wouldn't be safe for you."

"But..."

"No...No buts, Martha. When he wakes up, we'll have to contact the authorities or...or something."

So that's where Sherlock had gone when he went to sleep. He went to tattle on him. Like a good child. Like an angel.

James quietly backtracked away from the door so his feet wouldn't cause the floorboards to creak. He didn't want them to overhear him; to know that he was awake. He moved back towards the bed. There was a small window near the bed, which was now letting the natural light, light up the room more and more by the second as the sun rose. James hated it. He already felt so exposed. All he wanted to do was hide, perhaps even vanish, in the darkness.

He noticed the latch that was keeping the window shut, walking towards it quietly. He moved the latch off to the right and gently pushed the window up and open. Outside the birth of the new morning greeted his eyes; wisps of fog greeting him. He moved to drop down out of the window and into the very narrow alley on the other side. As he began to shut the window behind him, it was only then that he remembered that he'd forgotten his carpet bag in the hall. No matter. It contained his past life, and yes, his car had been in there, the only thing that he really had left of his mother, but he felt he was ready to leave that behind too. It was in the past. She was dead. His innocence was dead. It was no good carrying around skeletons like that.

* * *

Several years passed after he snuck out of Mrs. Hudson's flat. He never returned home to see his father, and his father never reported him to the police. They seemed to have agreed to mutually forget that the other existed. James was fine though. He knew how to survive. Sure, at first it was hard to get adjusted to having nothing, but James found a way to make it work. He at first started by canvasing the area he found himself in, looking for the best stores that would be easy to shoplift. He looked for stores that were either always crowded or lacked a good security system. He stole a larger (and dingyer) winter coat from a charity location to help him in his quest to steal. The only reason that he stole it was because of how large the pockets were.

Eventually, after months of shoplifting, he noticed that there was another boy that was doing the same thing, but he was doing it much more miserably. One day when James snuck into a shop to steal some food for the next couple of days, he noticed that a boy a bit older than him was staring back and forth as he stood in front of the canned soup. James smirked at this boy's "discreet" attempt at making sure the coast was clear. All his constant looking back and forth was doing was making him look extremely guilty. James watched then as the boy took a backpack off his back, undid the zipper with quite a shockingly loud 'ZIP' and began to shove a can of soup in there. And then another. James was shocked to see how many cans of soup the boy was attempting to make vanish into the bag.

Then it came. James knew it was coming too. It was too predictable. Sure, he could've warned the kid that he'd get caught, but he didn't want to. He had another plan cooking up in his mind, and if he had stopped what he had seen, his new plan wouldn't work. He watched one of the employees walk their way over to the boy and give him an admonishing gaze. The boy, after being lectured sternly by the employee, emptied his bag of his products and left the store with his head kind of drooped.

James moved to follow the boy outside the store, calling out to him before he could round the corner and disappear from sight.

"Hey! Wait a second!"

The slightly older boy turned to look at James who was now fast walking in order to catch up to him. James stopped a few feet short of the boy.

"What do you want?" asked the boy in a slightly acidic tone of voice.

"I saw what happened in the store back there. Your botched attempt at shoplifting."

"Excuse me?" asked the boy with an arched brow. "And you think you could do better?"

"That's a stupid question," remarked James with a smirk. "Stay here. I'll show you. I'll get your soup."

The boy smirked then as he looked at James, sizing him up with his eyes.

"If I can get caught in there, it means the employees are on high alert. They probably realized that they were missing inventory when they did the latest check up on their supplies. You honestly think you could sneak in there and get the soup without them thinking you were stealing?"

"Oh, honey. I don't just think. I know. Watch the master."

James walked cockily back towards the store that he had just left moments ago. He stepped inside naturally and walked towards the soup aisle. James crouched down, pretending to study the price tags with his eyes. He pretended that he hadn't found the brand of soup he was looking for, making sure to look out of the corners of each eye to see if any employee was coming his way. Once he knew that the coast was clear, he reached out a hand to grab a can of soup. He rolled it over to pretend to study the nutrition label as if his only luxury really were to care about his diet. He then slipped it into his pocket and stood back up. He grabbed a chocolate bar before moving to stand in the check out lane.

"Decided upon chocolate instead of soup?" asked the cashier. She looked to be in her mid-thirties. Her hair was tied back in a brown bun that was streaked with gray.

"Saw me come out of the soup aisle?" asked James.

The woman chuckled again as she set his now scanned chocolate bar up on the counter for him to take when they were done talking.

"Yes, I did. So why the change of food?"

James smirked.

"We only live once, so I had to weigh...eat healthier or not." James shrugged. "I choose not. I lean towards living dangerously."

The woman laughed again. It was like everything was a joke to her. Perhaps James would be like that when he reached her age. Perhaps when you were older like that, seeing middle age getting closer, you tended to find life funny to find it worth living. He might have to just give that method a try if that was the case.

James thanked the woman for her time, grabbed the chocolate bar, and moved to head back outside. He saw that the boy was still standing where he'd left him. As James walked back over to the boy, he gave him the same old smirk.

"You didn't get the soup, did you?" asked the boy.

"Oh, I did," said James as he fished his free hand into his coat pocket to produce the can of soup. He handed it to the boy.

The boy took the can of soup in his hands, looking shocked at the can then at James then back down at the can.

"How do you do that?"

"I disguised the truth in a lie," said James with a shrug as if what he had just done wasn't that big a deal. "One of the easiest cons."

"How old are you?" asked the boy.

"Doesn't matter. You know I'm younger than you, and you can leave it at that." James paused as he looked at the boy. "You have potential. You just need to learn some tricks, make some connections..."

"And what are you suggesting?"

"You know what I'm suggesting. You may need some help, but you aren't dumb."

The boy smirked then. He was amused by James' cocky and sarcastic attitude.

"Well, alright. Show me the way then."

James smiled, giving a nod towards the end of the sidewalk up ahead. "This way, sir. Follow me. Let me help you draw up some connections...spin a web..."

* * *

Over time, as James kept spinning his web, he became more and more wrapped up in deception. It all started with shoplifting just to get by, but then it turned into robbing other people. He thought himself a modern day Robin Hood when he'd nick money out of other people's pockets. In his mind, he was stealing from the happy to help himself. Even if people had never done anything personally to him, he started to feel this deep rooted hatred blossoming inside him. He felt he deserved a good life, and that was what he'd been robbed of. He started to live out his life as a revenge sort of quest. He was mad at the world and mad that he was made to be outside of it when he felt smart enough to be a part of it. Having that eat away at him inside made James rather soul less. Every single day began to make it worse and worse.

Eventually that hatred, jealous, and revenge morphed and manifested itself by having James commit murder. It all started when the swim meet came to London. James had been eying all these boys his age in all their joy, joking and laughing about with each other. They were all well fed, well cared for, and spoiled rotten by the looks of it. They all looked as if they got everything that they ever wanted or desired. James wanted to change that. He needed to teach them a lesson.

All the boys seemed the same except one. There was one boy that seemed to have some sort of weird skin outbreak. From all the reading and learning that James had been doing on his own those last several years, he made the assumption that what plagued the boy's face was a case of eczema. It was basically a case of dermatitis when the skin would break out in this reddish rash of sorts. James knew exactly how he'd go about his murder. It'd be so simple. All he had to do was get closer to the boy.

He waited until the rest of the swim team had disappeared inside the bowels of the building before moving to approach him himself. He looked better than he had about a year ago when his shoplifting had started. Now he looked like a slightly dapper but haggard young adult. He could gussy up and dress up, but that didn't disguise the lack of sleep he was still getting. His mind was too wired; too alive. It was teeming with a million dreams of the future; of plans that he was going to accomplish someday.

The boy that was still standing outside the pool turned to look when he saw James approaching out of the corner of his eye. James could tell that the boy seemed a bit uneasy towards him since he had seemed to have appeared out of no where to talk to him. James paused a few feet away from the boy and scanned him up and down with his eyes to take in his appearance. The boy was very well dressed and had a pair of well loved white sneakers on his feet. Sneakers. His own were getting holes in them. Might as well take his when he was done. Besides, it wasn't really robbing if you helped yourself to a dead man's belongings. It's not like they would have a need for them anymore. If you didn't take advantage of that kind of thing, it would go to waste. It would be a shame to waste anything.

"Can I help you?" asked the boy, breaking in on James' thoughts.

James shook his head and smiled at the boy.

"You're on the swim team?" asked James then. He had to get the boy's interest. If he could engage him, hook him, he could tangle him up in his web as his prey.

This boy would be his prey.

"Yep. And I'm going to be late, so unless you need something or...do I know you from somewhere?"

"You don't know me. I don't know you." James moved to extend his hand in greeting to the boy that was eying him strangely now. Be friendly. Hook him. Lure him in. "My name is James Moriarty. What's yours?"

"Carl," the boy replied as he reached forward to take James' hand in his and shake it gently. "Carl Powers."

Carl released James' hand after a moment, tugging his swim gear up higher on his shoulder.

"I really do have to be going, and I don't know you. Have a...um...have a good day, I guess, and I guess...well, nice to meet you."

"Wait..." James paused. "You are right. You don't know me...and I really shouldn't ask this, but...well..."

"Ask what?" asked Carl as he arched a brow; his curiosity getting the better of him at the moment.

"I was wondering...I really would like to learn to swim. Do you think you could...do you think you would mind giving me a couple pointers?

"I...I'm not sure. You're not a member and it would be bad of me to sneak you in..."

"But oh, won't you? See, I'm only in town for today and my father told me to get scarce..." James couldn't help the small smirk that threatened to appear then at that tiny bit of truth, "and I was just hoping I would luck out. I really thought I had when I saw you. I mean, sure there is a whole group of boys and I could have asked any one of them, but you looked nice."

Puppy dog eyes. He should throw that in for good effect. His mother had said that whenever he had flashed her the puppy dogs, begging for something, it was her ultimate weakness. His mother. Just thinking about that past memory caused a lump to form in his throat. He quickly swallowed the lump and hoped that if Carl had noticed it that he thought he was genuinely upset at the thought of not being able to swim.

The puppy dog eyes seemed to be doing the trick on Carl. James could tell that he was waffling and soon Carl let out the tell tale sigh that confirmed to James that he really had given in to his request.

"Oh, alright. I can teach you a couple of pointers, but it'll have to be after practice. My father is picking me up a half hour later tonight due to his work shift, so I'll teach you as much as I can within the half hour."

"That would be wonderful," said James as he tried to act all pleased, which wasn't hard for him to do. He was genuinely pleased that his plan seemed to be taking shape. Just a little bit longer...

"Meet me around back about an hour from now. I'll sneak you in through the locker room."

That was okay with James. That would give him enough time to put the rest of his plan in motion. He smiled at Carl.

"Thank you very much. I'll see you around back in about an hour then."

He watched Carl walk off to go inside to the pool where his friends and team were waiting before darting off. He made his way towards a nearby phone booth and slid inside. Diving a hand into his pocket, he found some change and dialed one of his loyal companions of the crew he'd put together.

"I need you to bring something to my location," remarked James when the person on the other end of the line finally decided like picking up.

"And where might that be?"

"Come now. Don't tell me that you weren't listening this morning. If you're that dull witted, go look at the map. You know we mapped it out."

James could hear some rustling on the other end of the line as the information was looked for and then, "Okay...what do you need me to bring to you?"

"Clostridium Botulinin."

"Umm...what?"

James gripped the phone tighter in his hand. He was lucky that he was in a telephone booth at the moment and not with this man. He was so dull. Didn't he ever hear of Clostridium Botulinin? What did he do? Never read up on different medicinal treatments and toxins? It was natural to know that knowledge. It helped one to survive.

"Go to the shelves and look for a bottle. It'll be labeled."

More rustling and clinking before he heard, "How do you spell it?"

For crying out loud.

"C-L-O-S-T-R-I-D-I-U-M...that's how you spell the first word. It's the only bottle with that name on it."

It was quiet for a few moments on the other end of the line while what he'd ask for was being looked for.

"Found it, boss. I'll bring it to your location within the hour."

"Perfect," remarked James with a wide grin. He couldn't contain how happy he actually was by this whole thing.

* * *

After James got the Clostridium Boltulinin in his possession, it felt like a lifetime and a half before he was snuck in through the locker room entrance. As Carl held the door open for him after everyone else had gone, James slipped into the locker room. The dampness from the recently used showers hung in the air, mixing with the heavy scent of men's cologne. James walked near the lockers, looking at the only bag remaining. Carl's. Now the problem was how to get a hold of Carl's medication.

"I certainly hope that you're a quick learner. Man, I don't even know why I'm doing this...If I get caught, I could be in so much trouble for letting you in..."

"It's because you're kind," said James.

And gullible. Easy prey.

James stood near Carl as they walked towards the door that would exit the locker room and lead them out to the pool. Quick. He had to think of something quick.

"I know this might be considered nosy, but what's with the splotches on your skin? Do you have a condition?"

Carl smirked, rolling his eyes.

"Might be considered nosy? That is as nosy a question as they come, but since you asked, it's due to eczema. Kind of an embarrassing sort of things, but I thank my lucky stars that my team doesn't hassle me for it." Carl reached up to rub a hand over his cheek a bit absent mindedly. "Perhaps I ought to put some more medication on before I swim."

"I'll go get it for you," said James, seeing his window of opportunity. "Where do you keep it?"

"Um...well.." James could see Carl debating whether or not it would just be better for him to go get the medication himself. Eventually though, Carl just gave in. "Oh, alright. It's in my gym bag back in the locker room in the front pocket."

"Got it," said James as he sprinted back into the locker room before Carl could change his mind.

He found the gym bag pretty easily. It was literally the only one left in the room. Looking over his shoulder to make sure that Carl hadn't followed him back, he moved to turn back around to unzip the front pocket. He found the medication for Carl's eczema and uncapped it. He reached his free hand into his pocket to dig out the Clostridium Boltulinin, uncapping that as well to pour some of it into the lotion. He recapped the Clostridium Botulinin and slipped it back into his pocket before recapping the eczema medication and giving it a few good shakes. That should do well enough. It would have to.

He moved to go rejoin Carl before his suspicions were aroused. Wearing the most genuine smile he could muster, James held out the medication to Carl.

"Here you go."

"Thanks," said Carl as he uncapped the medication and began to rub it on his skin as he led James out to the pool.

The pool was dark and quiet; quiet aside from the chlorine water slapping up against the lip of the pool. Carl was still in his swim shorts and moved to sit on the lip of the pool after putting his medication aside. James watched Carl sink into the water; a smile on his face. James could tell that this was where Carl felt most at home. At least he was being kind in that regard. It was where Carl felt at home and where he was going to die.

"Do you have any swim shorts under your clothing?" asked Carl as he looked at James standing near the edge of the pool, watching him.

"Nah, but I have on boxers. Those will work good enough."

James moved to begin gently stripping off the coat and shirt he had on before shoving his pants down. He sat on the edge of the pool as he tugged his socks off and set them aside.

"You're an odd boy, James," remarked Carl before shrugging and beginning to start doing swim strokes out to the less shallow end of the pool. "Now come along. We don't have that much time left."

James smirked a bit, slipping his legs into the pool. If only Carl knew how right he was about that fact. There wasn't much time left at all.

The water was cold against James' body as he walked out to stand in the pool until it was up to his waist.

"So, what type of stroke would you like to show me first?" asked James in as innocent a manner as he possibly could.

"I'll show you the most basic swimming stroke since we don't have much time at all. Watch."  
James stood there in the water, watching as Carl swam himself out into even deeper water. He seemed so happy. So carefree.

"Okay. Now watch carefully..."

Carl continued to lecture on, but James tuned him out. Sure he was here to watch, but not in the matter that Carl believed. He watched Carl swimming about, trying to do it in a slow manner so that James could learn to replicate the maneuver. It was then when the motions began to get slower and slower until they ceased being motions at all. He could see the panic come upon Carl's face; his wide, scared eyes turning to look at James as he just stood there. This was the beauty of using Clostridium Botulinin as his poison of choice. It worked so quickly and so effectively. When introduced to the body, Clostridium Botulinin acted like a paralytic. It paralyzed the body and rendered it useless.

"James...James help me," said Carl as his arms started to paralyze a bit more.

"You know what Carl. I lied to you earlier. Well...I mean, I sort of lied to you. I told you that we didn't know each other before today. But I knew you. I've been watching you for weeks. I've been waiting for this moment, and very patiently I might add."

James smirked, looking up at the ceiling for a moment as if for some sort of unseen sign before looking back at the scared Carl, who was trying to keep his head above water in whatever vain manner he could.

"Why though? Why me? What did you do?"

"You aren't dumb, Carl. You know your body is giving up on you. Your body is giving up on you as countless amounts of people have given up on me over the years. Do you realize that I have been an orphan now for several years? My mum died of cancer, my father was an abusive drunk, and I...the product of the both of them, their once innocent creation, was the most brilliant of the three. I was well read on everything. Famous works of literature, important and historical battles, and..."

"What does that have to do with me? What does any of that have to do with me?"

James sighed, shaking his head from side-to-side as he moved to walk closer to the paralyzing Carl. The water was halfway up his chest now.

"Oh, dying people and their lack of patience. If anything, you only have minutes left, so how's about you listen, hmm? I'm getting to the point. I would have already if you hadn't rudely interrupted me. So stop interrupting me. Now...where was I?"

"Famous works of literature...historical battles..." said Carl.

"Ah, yes. Well, I also learned in that time medicinal cures and toxins. It made me feel so wise at the time..I still do feel wise. I'm a person with all this knowledge and no one looks my way. Life has spit on me and cast me out. The one boy..." James paused as he thought briefly back on Sherlock Holmes; the one boy that he thought would relate to him and understand him, but who had, in the end, turned on him as well, "the one boy that I thought would understand me turned me out too."

"And I wonder why," said Carl through gritted teeth. "Now get to the point."

"Shhh..." said James, shaking his head as he walked over to stand just feet away from Carl. The water was up to James' neckline now. "The point is that I have grown to hate the world and everyone in it. If I can't have lucky breaks now and again, no one else should be able to either. So I chose you as my first target. You know how they say it's not healthy to keep things pent up inside, so here's my being healthy about it. Being proactive."

"But why me?"

"Because you were easy. You're isolated. You have a condition that would make poisoning you a walk in the park..the list really goes on and on."

"And what have you poisoned me with?" asked Carl.

"All you need to know is that it's a paralytic. It will paralyze you until you're rendered completely immobile. The water that you love to swim in so much will drag you down inside it, and...do you want to know the best part? Because this is where it really shows how clever I am..."

Carl didn't say anything. He just kept his gaze on James as James said in a lower tone of voice, "When they find you, it'll look like you drowned accidentally. Maybe they'll even think it was a suicide."

"You'll never get away with this," whispered Carl in an all too predictable way. That's what one always said before a murderer got away with their crime.

"Just watch me," whispered James before an all too sinister smirk spread across his face, "Oh wait. You won't be able to. You'll be dead. Bless your soul." He crossed his hands across his chest. "May you rest in peace."

The complete look of terror and hatred that was directed James' way didn't even phase him. He watched the water that was still lapping at the edges of the pool come to cover the top of Carl's head as he sank into its grip. Looking down in slight amusement, he saw the panicked look on Carl's face as he kept his head turned upwards with a look of resignation as the life was leaving his body. It looked so peaceful there in that mirror world where sound and images were distorted. He wondered how long Carl could possibly hold his breath like that, being on the swim team and everything. Carl chose not to hold it for as long as he probably could. That or the whole shock of the thing was too much for him. In the same minute that Carl was pulled under by the water, he was dead. James knew that he was dead simply by looking at him.

It should have terrified him. He had never killed anyone before. Hating someone was one thing, but committing an act of murder was something completely different. However, it didn't phase James at all. It didn't bother him how he had just taken a human life. Living on his own, realizing that no one would ever take him in and love him, had turned him into a soul less person. People that deserved to live, like his mother, didn't get to while people like his father, who drank themselves silly and were abusive to their families, got to live. It wasn't right. James knew that he shouldn't be playing God, but his heightened intelligence made him feel like he ought to be able to. So that's what he did. He played God, crafting worlds of webs and taking the lives of those who deserved to die.

After watching Carl's still body under the water for a minute or two more, he climbed out of the pool. He would have stayed there for a couple of minutes more, but he could feel the cold beginning to take his toll. He was freezing. He heard his wet feet creating loud footsteps across the edge of the pool as he moved back to the locker room. He collected up his belongings, making sure that not even a hair was left behind when the Yard was called to canvas the scene. He didn't need any trace of himself being found there.

He decided to take the same way out as he had in since he hadn't touched anything. He stood in the locker room for a brief moment so that he could slip his clothes back on. It still didn't seem to shake the cold that clung to his thin and wiry frame. He stared at the reflection that stared back at him in the mirror; noticing the haunted and sinister look that hung on his face. In just a matter of minutes, it almost seemed as if he had morphed into another person entirely, or perhaps he had looked this way for a while. It wasn't like he owned a mirror and living from shelter to shelter didn't give him a chance to look at himself. The best glance he ever got at himself previous to this were in shop windows or in the puddles that formed on the sidewalks after a rain storm.

As he stared at his reflection in the mirror, reflecting on his transformation, he noticed Carl's sneakers by his duffel bag. He looked down at his own feet then, seeing one of his toes peeking out through the toe of the shoe. He was in dire need of new sneakers. Sure the toes were starting to peek out, but the soles of the shoes were just as bad. He balanced on one foot as he looked at the nearly non existent sole. He was almost soul less on two different levels.

He moved to walk over to Carl's shoes, picking them up and measuring them against his foot. They were close enough to his size that they'd do for a little bit. He still kept his own old sneakers with him, tying the laces together and throwing them over his neck to carry it that way before slipping Carl's sneakers on. He may be soul less, but at least he wouldn't be _sole_ less. He smirked at the pun that he'd made as he walked to exit the locker room, shouldering it with his sleeve so as not to leave fingerprints on anything.

He found out a week or so later that the Carl Powers' case had initially been ruled an accidental death as he had planned, but that a young kid by the name of Sherlock Holmes had taken up the situation as a case, saying it was murder. Sherlock Holmes. The name that would always seem to come back to haunt him. James knew right then and there that Sherlock would just continue to be an irksome pest, but that was okay. He needed a challenge. It would be more fun that way.

* * *

James frequently thought back on his first murder as the years passed him by and he grew into a young man instead of a kid. The horror of the deed wouldn't stick with him. No, what would stick with him forever was how peaceful and cold the water had been; about how swift and sure Carl's burial had been. If he thought about it long and hard enough, he could feel the cold come back to wash over him. He couldn't help it. It was there. It would always be there. The cold...the chill...the first kill...a boy named Powers who wanted to live but lost the will...


End file.
